Auschwitz Martyrs
Auschwitz Martyrs - Saint Maxmilian KolbeOn May the 28th, 1941, Father Maxmilian, although suffering seriously from tuberculosis, was transported along with 320 other prisoners, to Auschwitz. He was treated no better because he was a religious. Rather, they were harsher on the religious, taking some kind of delight, determining how much torture they could take before cracking. Father Maxmilian was given a number, 16670; he was assigned to block 17. The guards pushed, kicked and beat Father when he was too ill to walk. He struggled, as he tried to haul the wheel barrels full of gravel, they needed to build the crematorium walls. Oh, they were not past using prisoners to build their own means of torture or death. No matter how they brutalized him, how they tried to humiliate him, they could not force Father into hating them. He had so much love in his eyes, they made him lower his eyes so they wouldn’t have to look into them. Auschwitz or the Death Camp, as it was more commonly called, was originally to be for the extermination of Jews. Then, the Third Reich added to their martyred number: the Danish, French, Greek, Spanish, Flemish, Yugoslavian, German, Norwegian, Russian, Rumanian, Hungarian and Italian undesirables, whose only crime was they were leaders or intellectuals. Although its horror was not singularly its own, it had the reputation of being the most efficient of all the concentration camps, building up to a record of exterminating 3500 enemies of the state in 24 hours.They became so good at their job, the sign above the entrance gate reading "Work makes one free," they were capable of killing prisoners on arrival. Many they did; others they saved for slave labor; others they had fun with: their action-to degrade, to see how low they could make a human stoop with enough torture. I think, the saddest testimony I ever heard was from a survivor of the concentration camps. He told-how parents would have their children go before them, into the showers (the Nazis jokingly called the gas chambers), so they would not be frightened, the parents reassuring them, it was all right, they would be following.
Auschwitz Martyrs - Saint Edith Stein
On August 7th, the two sisters Edith and Rosa Stein were transported from Westerbrook to Auschwitz! They, with thousands of helpless Jews were jammed mercilessly into cattle cars to make the long ride to hell. Many died before they arrived in Auschwitz. There was no air in the cars, no facilities to relieve oneself, no water or food for days. When one died, the others had to remain with him in the same car. [A man gave this testimony, in 1982. He said he had been a worker on a mail truck when he was conscripted into the German Army. While he was being transported to Russia, for special duty, he said that his train stopped to be refueled, in a railroad yard in Breslau. A train pulled up alongside, and stopped. When the guard opened up the door of one of the cattle cars, he saw people heaped on one another like bundles of rags, and others squatting, swaying back and forth listlessly. There was an unbearable stench coming from within the cars. He could hear the moaning and wailing of men and women, interrupted only by the pathetic crying of little children. He testified, there was a Nun among them dressed in brown, with a yellow Star of David on her breast. He said that maybe it was because he looked at them sympathetically, she spoke to him: "It’s terrible. We don’t even have containers to relieve ourselves." Then looking forlornly off into the village of Breslau, she said: "This is my home; I’ll never see it again....We are going to our death." Trying to contain his feelings, he asked her if the other prisoners knew. She responded, "It’s better for them not to know." He identified the Nun in brown, as Edith Stein. He said that the train was marked as going to Poland.
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